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Thursday, May 31, 2007

How to post iPhoto images to Blogger

Background

I spent a good deal of an evening trying to find a quick and easy way to post from iPhoto to Blogger. I found one pay option involving a utility that used Flickr as a middle man, but that costs about $26 USD to register.

I contemplated using Applescript and the Blogger API for the task. I was hunting up the relevant API and Applescript documentation when I had a thought. I'd already set up Blogger Mobile so it would post photos I sent from my cell phone and my gmail account. The cell phone posting I used all the time, but the gmail posting, almost never.

I'd stumbled across iPhoto2Gmail in my hunt. This utility allows you to e-mail photos through your gmail account directly from iPhoto. It even lets you resize them on the fly.

Within a few minutes, I was happily posting photos to Blogger from iPhoto without a care in the world.

Of course, iPhoto's ability to share messages via e-mail gives you even more flexibility by letting you bypass Gmail completely and use any Pop account you wish.

You need to create a Blogger Mobile account. This is a simple matter of sending an e-mail or SMS message to go@blogger.com

You need to claim your Mobile Blogger Account. When you create the account, you'll receive an e-mail or SMS message from Blogger Mobile containing a token. Go to go.blogger.com and log in with the token sent by Blogger.

Next, you need to merge the Blogger Mobile Blog with your regular Blog. You'll receive directions on how to do this once you "claim" your Mobile Blog. After you claim the Blog, you'll see a list of "Mobile Devices" in your Blogger Dashboard

You're almost done. If the e-mail account you used to create the Mobile Blog is set up in the Mac Mail application, then you can start posting your photos to Blogger by simply highlighting them, clicking on the Share menu and selecting "Email". Follow the prompts and send the e-mail to go@blogger.com

If you want to use Gmail, download and install iPhoto2Gmail Once this is configured and installed, you will post to Blogger by highlighting the photos in iPhoto, and selecting the File menu, selecting Export and going to the iphoto2gmail tab. The tab name may be truncated.

The one down side to using iphoto2gmail is that it will append the following text to the bottom of each post:Email Sent using iPhoto2Gmail http://notoptimal.net

With either method (POP or Gmail) you'll still have sent messages containing the resized photos in Gmail or the Mac Mail application. The Mac Mail application can be configured to purge e-mail from the sent messages folder, which may be a valid option if you don't use Mac Mail for anything else.

That's the long and the short of it. A quick, free, easy way to get iPhoto top post directly to Blogger.

Thank you for the tip. Using the gmail export works great, but for some reason when I try to use mac mail to publish photos to blogger the photos do not make it - there is just a broken link where the picture should be. And I have selected "always send windows friendly attachments". Any ideas? Seems like I'm having the same problem as Dn> Gergory.

Hi...I'm having the same problem - I can post text using this method, but none of the photos come through - only the placeholder icons. Any suggestions please? I would love to be able to use this feature...

I have found that if you "share" when you are viewing the photo. If you are back in the preview screen, where you can see all the other photos in that set, then "share" by email. This works, however the problem I have is that the image in the post is small and I cannot find a way of making it bigger by default.